i am finding out that love will kill and save me
by emilyforprez
Summary: the beauty & the tragedy.


**A/N: **Eh, dunno about this one. I like the idea of it, but I don't like the way I wrote it specifically. Basically, I feel like people are too certain that Puck would cheat on Quinn, so I shook it up a little.

* * *

_for i am finding out that love  
(will kill and save me)_

_**trading yesterday**_

Her fingertips trace the line of his jaw, pressing her lips there insistently, eyes searching and seeking and hoping. There's hope in her eyes, on her lips, falling down in shattered prayers (yet they are tears, salty and tangy and horrible). The hope is short-lived - she's not one for hope, but rather for faith, and there's nothing to have faith in now. Why try? She tries far too hard, and so does he, too; they try hard together but it's not going to help. Nothing really helps them. The God she holds onto desperately, clutching to her belief that he's watching over her, simply watches them. There's nothing he can do. Even God could only watch helplessly.

He holds onto her, and he doesn't want to let go this time. If he lets go - well, why let go? He can't. He holds on. It's all he can do. It's all he's learned, in his lifetime, that if he lets go, she'll let go too. They are two sides of a tug-of-war; if one side lets go the other falls and there's nothing they can do to pick up the pieces.

She presses her face into his chest and he holds her close. She whispers apologies, mellifluous words into the cotton of his t-shirt. And he listens but says nothing, because there is nothing he can say. She continues speaking, because she's also learned that words are the foundation for forgiving and apologies.

But this time, there are no words, just things she says that don't mean anything.

_we'll fall just like stars being hung by only string.  
__everything, everything here is gone._

_**william fitzsimmons**_

"I love you." It's the hesitance in her words, the soft breath of air she releases after it, that makes him realize that she's simply asking for forgiveness. The words might be true (might be) but that doesn't make it anymore of a means of patronizing, a tiny hint of a lie, even if it isn't at all. She's simply giving him what he wants to hear.

But he holds on to the memory of what used to be, what may never be the same; and for once it's not him to fuck it up. How odd, how strange, how beautiful (but not at all, not really).

But he smiles at her because she wants a smile, she wants assurance, she wants what he can't give her, so he pretends to give her it. But he simply doesn't remember how to be angry at her.

"You too." He breathes in her perfume and the smell of her shampoo, coconut and magnolias and something else, something that is her and only her. There's no other explanation for it.

_your face say these promises, whispered like prayers.  
__i don't need them. no, i don't need them._

_**natalie merchant**_

It's not his intent to remember but he does, like a reopened wound, constantly bleeding black. He bleeds too much but no one sees it.

His head is heavy and her heart is even heavier, and he's carrying it in his palm, but it's weighing him down, it's causing him to wilt like a flower without sunlight. But he has to keep it because no one else will. No one else would love her just as much.

She holds on to his heart. It's hers (of course it's hers, forevermore) but she's not doing so well, she's not taking care of it as well as she should be.

But he holds on. He has to.

But sometimes he wonders (just a little, just enough) how it felt, how it felt to know he's sitting at home, just alone, just with no one, and she's not there, she's never there, she's elsewhere with someone else doing whatever and he... he didn't even _know._

He just wants to ask. He has to know. But if he asked, she wouldn't answer; she'd simply give him another apology, another lie, another hopeful gaze, those shattered prayers falling from her eyes.

And he can't bear to hurt her anymore.

_i shot for the sky. i'm stuck on the ground.  
__so why do i try? i know i'm gonna fall down._

_**jason walker **_

She presses kisses to his knuckles and to his face, trying to heal the wound that she can't see, that she can't feel. But it's something that's been there for far too long, so long that he can't remember where it is, how to fix it. She tries, at least, and he appreciates that she tries. She at least tries. And it's not working (won't work, not now, not ever) but it's an effort, it's something. Most people wouldn't try when they knew nothing would work.

He continues to carry her heart, continues to hold her up when she wants to fall, and it's something, isn't it? It must be a cosmic joke - a cruel deity of some kind, a higher power laughing at his expense - that he loves her, because he should have left so long ago, too long ago.

And she'll never do it again ("never again, I promise you, I _promise you_ I'll never do it again, I _love_ you") but he can't help but remember.

Her words had been so soft, so cruelly quiet. ("_Puck, there's something you should know.")_

_so, my love, i've left this world for a while, for a while.  
__i float through strange days, search the one-way to bring me back to you._

_**tom mcrae**_

It's getting easier everyday. And that's something. It's a little something - so tiny, so insignificant, it's probably nothing, but he feels it getting easier to deal. It's less fake now, those words. It's getting easier.

He says he loves her (he means it, she means it, too, it's no more of a patronizing tone). He's going to hold on a bit more, just because she refuses to let go.

She wraps her arms around his neck because he's too tall, too tall for her, but they match because they can. They'll make it match. It's more like, "This puzzle piece doesn't fit, so I'll cut one end of it off and _make it fit._" They'll make themselves fit even if they don't.

And there's always going to be that tiny memory, that little sliver of a thought of infidelity. Because they can forgive but it's hard to forget.

Yet he closes his eyes and tries to remember what it was like to feel anything other than joy in her presence - something like sadness, bitterness - but he can't feel that. There's nothing like that to feel.

He breathes in her scent and holds her, because he won't let go. That was his mistake the first time. "Love you," he whispers into her hair.

There's that pause, that incredulous moment when she remembers that he does love her, when she remembers and registers that he's forgiven her. That moment when she wants to cry and wants to hold on tighter, and she squeezes him closer, she holds on.

"I love you, too," she says. And she means it. She means it this time, she's always meant it but now he knows it.

The heart he's always held swells in his palm, and rather than growing heavier and wilting his body, it fills with warm, sweet air, holding him up rather than weighing him down.


End file.
